As technologies and interpersonal communication develop, a mobile terminal has become an important means for people's communication. The mobile terminal is generally a personal article, but because of factors such as an interpersonal relationship, hard-to-refuse, or politeness, people cannot totally prevent the mobile terminal from being used by other people. There is lots of people's privacy in the mobile terminal, such as a short message service message, a contact, a call log, a photo, and an instant messaging message. People expect that the privacy can be protected when the mobile terminal is used by the other people. To resolve a mobile terminal privacy protection problem, a privacy protection mode is set in most mobile terminals to ensure that a user other than an owner is hard to obtain privacy in the mobile terminal in the privacy protection mode.
In other approaches, the privacy protection mode may be implemented in multiple manners. One method is returning, when the mobile terminal is in the privacy protection mode, virtual data when an application in the terminal is opened. For example, in the privacy protection mode, an opened album may display a blank or only display a non-private photo set by a user. A defect of the method is that setting of the returned virtual data is relatively complex and tedious, and if there are many applications, the setting is more tedious. In addition, if the virtual data setting is not realistic enough, the method is easily perceived by another user, which causes unnecessary embarrassment.
Another method is entering different modes by setting different authentication manners. For example, a privacy mode and a normal operation mode correspond to different passwords, patterns, personal identification number (PIN) codes, and fingerprints. A setting of the method is relatively convenient, but in the method, a user is generally prompted to enter a password, draw a pattern, or scan a fingerprint, and therefore a used mode is easily perceived by the user. For example, the mobile terminal is set to enter different modes according to different passwords. Generally, the normal mode is entered when a correct password is entered, and the privacy protection mode is entered when an incorrect password is entered. In this case, the mobile terminal prompts the user to enter a password, and a lock screen can be unlocked by the user entering any incorrect password. The user knows that the entered password is an incorrect password but the lock screen is unlocked, and therefore the user perceives that the privacy protection mode is entered. Another defect of the method is that authentication information needs to be entered only when the lock screen is to be unlocked, and after the lock screen is unlocked, privacy protection cannot be implemented when the user operates an application.
It can be seen that, in the other approaches, there is no mobile terminal privacy protection method that is convenient and efficient and further can avoid being easily perceived by a user.